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March 27, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
11:14
300 BLACKOUT: Analysis by a real scientist
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Alright, this is a scientific discussion of the.300 Blackout cartridge for AR-style rifles.
And I am a scientist.
My name is Mike Adams.
I'm known as the Health Ranger.
I'm really a scientist in the forensic food world.
I'm the author of the book, Food Forensics.
I run an analytical laboratory with multiple mass spec instruments.
And I'm also, of course, well-trained in tactical shooting and Long-range shooting and self-defense shooting, things like that.
So, I have quite a bit of experience in this realm.
I just want to share with you my thoughts from a scientific perspective of what I think about the.300 Blackout cartridge because I really like this cartridge.
And it really comes down to physics.
I know there's a lot of discussion online.
Oh, and by the way, I should mention, this is for gear.news.
So go to gear.news to see more stories on topics like this.
People have a million different opinions, but most people's opinions aren't rooted in any kind of actual science when it comes to cartridges.
They're not really talking about the mass of the bullet.
They're not talking about the velocity or the energy that is imparted by the bullet as it hits the target.
Those are the things that really matter, plus a few other things I'm going to mention.
Let me first start with the weaknesses of the standard 5.56 cartridge that's used in most AR-style rifles.
The bullet is too small.
If you're running a typical 55 grain or 62 grain bullet, it's too small.
It doesn't have that much mass.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with the grain designation, grains is a unit of mass.
I don't know why they use grains in bullets.
Why not just use grams?
You know, just convert it to grams.
But they use grains, so there you go.
55 grains or 62 grains.
I don't know how many grains there is in a gram.
But there's a conversion table out there.
In any case, the AR-15 typical bullet 5.56 is really about the diameter of a, in the Imperial system, 0.223 inches diameter.
In other words, it's about the same as a.22 bullet, which is a very small diameter.
There's a lot more powder behind it, which means it's got a higher velocity.
You can get close to 3,000 feet per second out of an AR-style cartridge firing a 5.56 round.
But the mass is really too small to significantly impart the kind of kinetic violence that you want when it hits its intended target, because that's the whole point.
Of having a firearm is to impart kinetic violence at a distance.
You're trying to achieve the delivering of kinetic energy to your target at a distance in order to cause, you know, whatever your intended effect is, which in a self-defense scenario is to stop someone from harming you.
And the 5.56 round just doesn't impart enough energy.
Plus, here's another problem.
The 5.56 doesn't cycle well in short barrel configurations.
So you know how it's popular to run pistols today with an arm brace?
I run them too.
They're great.
You can have like a 10 inch barrel with an arm brace and it's designated a pistol.
It's not an SBR. You don't need a special attack stamp for that stuff.
It's just a pistol.
And that's a good self-defense weapon to have.
But if you're running 5.56 rounds in very short barrels, you start getting below 10 inches, you're going to have a lot of cycling problems because that AR platform is set up to cycle rounds with a longer barrel.
The gas system is designed for a certain delay time.
How long it takes the expanding gases to go through that gas system and get back to the bolt carrier group and cycle that system.
And if you significantly shorten that whole gas system, you can run into a lot of problems.
Even when you have adjustable gas, as a lot of good rifles do these days, you can still have a lot of problems just because of the timing.
But the.300 Blackout cycles really well in very short barrel configurations.
In fact, I think SIG has one out there called the Rattler.
That is some crazy short barrel, like five and a half inches or something.
I don't recall exactly.
Maybe it's seven inches, but it's short.
It's really short.
Yeah, it fires a.300 Blackout, and it cycles.
So that's something to really keep in mind.
If you're looking for one cartridge that's going to work in a short barrel configuration as well as a long barrel, you know,.300 Blackout, Is a fantastic choice.
You'll get more velocity out of a longer barrel, of course, but that's great because if you want to push it out there, because of the mass of the bullet, you have less loss of velocity and kinetic energy over its flight path than you do versus a 5.56 round.
In other words, you could shoot a.300 blackout out to 700, maybe 750 yards if you know your holds.
Because it has that kind of stability due to the greatly increased mass of the bullet.
You know, you can get some of those bullets up to 220 grains.
You compare that to 55 grains of an AR, you know, you're talking 400% more mass in a 300 blackout round of that mass.
But of course, you can get 300 blackout in smaller masses as well.
I'm just saying, you can go up to 220 if you want a subsonic round.
Which brings me to the next point, subsonic shooting.
What's great about the.300 blackout is it has so much mass that you can achieve subsonic velocities and still impart a tremendous amount of kinetic energy on the target.
Whereas if you have a very small bullet like the.556, if you try to go subsonic on that, It's so slow and so small that you don't have much energy left.
It's really doing no damage on the target because you've given up both mass and energy or velocity.
Let's review the equation here, okay?
Energy is one half of mass times velocity squared.
So mass and velocity are the only two things that matter when it comes to imparting energy on your target.
You got it?
Mass and velocity.
That's it.
Mass matters.
Velocity matters squared.
So velocity is a big deal.
But if you have low mass and low velocity, you don't have much energy.
You've got to have...
So if you want low velocity, i.e.
a subsonic round, you've got to have high mass to make up for the low velocity if you want to impart energy on your target.
That's where the.300 blackout really, really shines.
Big mass, 220 grains in that case.
Lower velocity keeps it subsonic.
Cycles well in a short-barreled rifle or pistol.
And you can run it suppressed without having any cycling problems.
So it's quiet, it's effective, and if you shoot it through a longer barrel, you can push it out to, again, 700 plus yards if that's what you want to do.
So it's a very versatile cartridge.
In fact, as you may know, this cartridge was intended to sort of compete with the 7.62x39 You know, the AK cartridge, as it's sometimes known, which, frankly, from the get-go was a much smarter cartridge design.
It had a bigger bullet.
It had more mass, you know, it was a shorter bullet than the typical 5.56, but it was a bigger mass of bullet.
I mean, it was a shorter overall cartridge than the 5.56 cartridge, but the bullet itself was bigger, you know, fatter, larger diameter bullet, more mass than the bullet.
So the 7.62x39 is a really smart cartridge.
And also, by the way, if you look at the design of the AK-47, the original design, it's a very smart design.
And you combine those two, the 7.62 and the AK rifle, you've got, you know, no wonder so many people have been so effective with that rifle over all these decades.
It's just the mechanics of the AK cycling mechanism are so intelligent.
You've got to say that Kalashnikov, that's his name, was an absolute genius, right?
No question about it.
And Eugene Stoner wasn't a moron by any means, but...
The design of the AK is just, it's freaking genius.
You know, the ruggedness of the design, the ability for the gun to fire when it's dirty, the ability for it to fire when it's not lubricated, the simple, very small number of parts, the simplicity of the whole thing, the ease of field stripping it and cleaning it in the field and all this, it's just, it is astonishing.
The guy was a genius, no question about it.
An amazing design.
The only thing that sucks about it is that bolt doesn't lock open after you shoot your last round.
So you just hear click instead of a bolt lock back like you get with the AR. But, you know, the AR has its advantages too, which I guess I'll cover in another podcast at some point.
But the point is here that If you're going to get a cartridge that can be used in short range, can be used suppressed, can be used subsonic, or can be pushed out to long range and has the mass to deliver a tremendous amount of kinetic energy to your target, I'm telling you, the 300 Blackout cartridge kicks ass.
It's great.
And based on the weight of the cartridge that you buy, you know, you can go 170 grain or you can go 180 grain or you can go, I think, as low as 140 grain.
You give up mass of the bullet, you gain a lot more powder.
So you have more velocity.
So you can choose.
Do you want high mass, low velocity, because you're going to run at subsonic?
Or do you want lower mass and much higher velocity, because you want that much faster speed, which means less drop over distance, so your dope is easier?
You can choose that in the same configuration.
And guess what?
300 Blackout uses all your standard PMAGs, right?
It uses the same lower as an AR. All you got to do is swap out the barrel or maybe the whole upper if that's what you want to do.
But you talk about versatile.
This is a very smart design.
I'm doing a lot of testing with the 300 Blackout, running it suppressed, running it unsuppressed, running it short barrels, long barrels, long range, short range, everything.
And so far, you know, it is truly fantastic.
From a scientist's perspective, it makes sense that this cartridge...
is the way to go for a lot of scenarios where people, they used to just, by default, buy a 5.56 AR-style rifle.
They thought that was the best thing.
I'm here to tell you that isn't necessarily the best thing.
This.300 blackout, in many ways, is vastly superior.
So check it out for yourself.
My name is Mike Adams.
I'm known as the Health Ranger.
You can follow more gear reviews at the website I publish called gear.news.
Thank you for listening.
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